A structural model of acceptance of authoritarian solutions in college students

The purpose of the present study was to develop and test an explanatory model of the propensity to accept authoritarian solutions for national problems by a sample of college sutdents from two curricular areas. A first phase of the study involved developing the scales to measure some ideological and social variables. The second generated a structural equation model. The model considered two exogenous variables, authoritarian leadership and curricular area, as well as three endogenous variables: conservatism, political sophistication, and acceptance of authoritarian solutions (AAS). Path analysis using the LISREL8 program yielded a satisfactory goodness of fit. The analysis showed that conservatism had a substantial direct effect on AAs and that it mediated the indirect effect of leadership and curricular area. These last two variables had significant direct effect on the acceptance of authoritarian solutions. The degree of political sophistication was shown to be affected by the study area, as well as negatively by acceptance of authoritarian solutions.